Gertrude Stein managed her life to make her writing possible. Endowed with family money as well as with an original and outrageous talent, she discovered in the 1920’s that Paris was the city where she felt most able to do her work. She engaged and supported the life-long devotion of Alice Toklas, who even allowed her (was there any option?) to write her—Alice’s—autobiography. Not biography but autobiography!
This photograph of the two of them with their dog, Basket, taken in war-time France, raises difficult questions. Stein and Toklas were Jewish yet they did not return to the U.S. in 1939 when the Third Reich was on the move. And Stein even translated and wrote an introduction to a collection of speeches by Marshal Pétain. Her fabulous collection of modern art, unlike nearly all other private collections, was not confiscated by the Nazis when they took over Paris. She was able to reclaim it after the war.
It came as a surprise to me, to learn from a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City at the opening of the Stein Collection that she was a conservative Republican who opposed President Roosevelt and his New Deal. Her politics were her family’s, wealthy manufacturers in the U.S.
After war was declared, Stein and Toklas were issued a forty-eight-hour pass to return from the country house they were renting to Paris, to claim their passports and other essential items. During this brief visit, Stein arranged with a friend for the caretaking of her art collection. She and Toklas then returned to their country house and were apparently undisturbed during a period when mass arrests of Jews, particularly those of foreign birth, was happening all the time. Some of the two women’s protected status seems to have come from the fact that they were well-liked. Stein roved the countryside with her dog, talking to farmers; her lesbian relationship with Toklas was known but didn’t matter. The authorities in her village responsible for reporting Jews simply never mentioned the two women. Stein’s books were banned in France during the war yet she continued to publish.
The Gestapo did enter their apartment—the concierge sent her son down the street to warn Picasso—but the war was approaching its end and the Gestapo only took a small footstool Toklas has embroidered with a design of Picasso’s.
The story is complex and after all these years will probably never be entirely sorted out. I take from it admiration for the two women’s resourcefulness—when their money was gone, they lived off their neighbors—and comfort in my sense that Stein’s market basket was never empty even as severe war-time rationing set in. She knew the farmers.
Stein as well as Colette are two of my complicated yet inspiring women mentors. Colette also survived the war years in her Paris apartment, somehow shielding her Jewish husband from deportation.
Almost as important to me as a writer as the shoes and boots that carry me to the dance or to the mountains of Santa Fe. May we all be equally blessed.
Gorham-Skinner says
Love this post. The shoes and boots are great too. xxoo
Alice Cash says
Wonderful post, Sallie! I feel sure they must have moved in some of the same circles as Wanda Landowska. Would love to talk to you about this sometime. Landowska and Denise Restout were also in Paris in the 20’s.
Denise Kusel says
I had this photo of Gertrude, Alice and Basket on my desk for years. They were the family that I always wanted.
Denise Kusel
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Kim Farin says
Hi Denise – I’m looking for John Villani. My name is Kim – from Denver – and I’m a huge fan of his Art Town book. So much a fan, that I’m on a mission to visit all 100 towns – I’ve already been to 70 of them! Do you know how I could get a hold of him? (I found you because he included you in his dedication in the front of the book.)